Mojo: October Issue And The Quiet Revolution CD

Elton John is on the cover of an extremely pink Mojo this month, broadcasting the magazine's interview with him. The magazine also includes interviews with Tom Petty, Tony Bennett, and George Clinton, as well as a tribute to Arthur Lee that features his last interview.

An article discusses the climb of Monty Python up the ladder of success, while another details The Jesus And Mary Chain's contentious history.

Elsewhere, Tori Amos, dubbed "The Piano-Playing Kookstress" by Mojo, draws a self-portrait. I'm very, very good at this sort of thing. Gonna say.. hmm... she's sensitive, a mystical type... the sort Eric Cartman would not approve of... and she likes music.

When I was a little kid, I used to say that people would look better without noses. I think this might have been at least partly because the people I drew back then would have looked better without them. I found noses really hard to draw. Little triangles didn't look noses and trying to get nostrils right seemed an impossible task.

Tori's portrait is about 75% nose, in a silhouette-style triangle. She sketched just a bit of color to show her hair: a small, square-shaped squiggle of salmon/brick at the top-left (i.e. a forehead area). For a mouth there's a pink musical note on its side, (representing her, singing) I like the portrait for its economy and cleverness - it's fun. Yet I admit it isn't something I would want to hang on one of my walls. Aesthetics is a tricky and personal thing (all the moreso when you consider that the word itself has different meanings. Words... art... noses... bah)

In her short interview, Amos unshockingly reveals that her piano is her "most treasured possession". She says "collecting books on visual art" is her biggest non-musical passion. She also says she has many regrets, every day, and would like to be remembered as "someone who served good wine to all, even if you weren't necessarily called a friend."

Mojo reports that the Shins have been recording their next album, title TBD, to be released early next year. The band are co-producing it with Joe Chiccarelli (who, coincidentally, produced Tori Amos' Y Kant Tori Read). A Sub Pop representative says one song is "an homage to Morrissey, another has a Jesus And Mary Chain feel to it. But the rest is pure Shins." Petra Haden and "members of the Decemberists" guest.

Included with this issue is a "summer folk compendium", The Quiet Revolution, with tunes both old and new (some from forthcoming albums). Mojo notes that nearly 40 years separate the earliest and most recent tracks on the compilation. Despite the folk label, they disclaimer that only "much of the music included here falls loosely under the folk umbrella." It's mostly more-or-less kinda like folk music anyway.

The Quiet Revolution: 15 Tracks Hand-Picked By Mojo Track Listing:

1. Kevin Ayers - All This Crazy Gift Of Time
2. Akron/Family - Gone Beyond (from Meek Warrior, out on Oct. 3 in the U.S. and Sept. 25 in the U.K.) Mojo calls this track "beautifully crafted" and "Zepp-esque" and says "Meek Warrior threatens to be one of the year's finest releases." If you like the banjo, the words "gone", "beyond", and "completely"), and songs where the music semi-occasionally fades in and out, possibly because they're checking whether you're paying attention... this might be for you.
3. Diane Cluck - All I Bring You Is Love
4. Vashti Bunyan - Rose Hip November
5. Pentangle - Helping Hand
6. Woven Hand - Swedish Purse
7. Shelagh McDonald - Stargazer (available on Let No Man Steal Your Thyme) Mojo: "In 1972 24-year-old Scottish singer Shelagh McDonald disappeared, her whereabouts remaining a mystery for 33 years. Then, in November 2005, came a newspaper article detailing the effect of a bad LSD trip and her resultant itinerant lifestyle. While she has not returned to music, the haunting splendour of 'Stargazer' proves that she continues to beguile." I listened to the song, and decided to post it, before reading the sad track notes. The newspaper article adds more details. Some are sad, but some are positive, most notably that she says her "voice and confidence" have recovered.
8. James Yorkston - Summer Song (from The Year Of The Leopard, which will be released on September 25 in the UK and Japan, and in late October in Germany) Mojo: "Fife's new troubadour cut his teeth in hardcore outfit huckleberry before securing an impromptu solo support slot opening for Bert Jansch. Then his interest in Anne Briggs took hold as he developed his own approach to folk." Starts out a very gentle folk song, then decides to rock, but very gently.
9. Josephine Foster - There Are Eyes Above
10. John & Beverley Martyn - Go Out And Get It (available on Stormbringer) Mojo: "Originally planned as Beverley's solo album, Stormbringer was written with her husband, Scottish folk guitar hero John, in Woodstock, New York, in 1969, and eventually released under both their names. The marked influence of The Band's Music From The Big Pink is evident throughout, as the album's downhome opener 'Go Out And Get It' proves." Feel-good hippie-folk-rock.
11. Bert Jansch - The Black Swan
12. Espers - Children Of Stone
13. Davy Graham - Blues Raga
14. Pete Brown & Piblokto! - Broken Magic
15. Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Stars Spill Out Of Cups (available on We Just Did What Happened And No One Came) Mojo: "When beauty falls/It finds me here/In summer's bright and dusty smear" begins Sweet Billy Pilgrim's Tim Elensburg on this joyous slice of British folk-tronica." Sweeping, lovely, twinkly, grand.